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The Current Transcript for December 26, 2017

Host: Catherine Cullen

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Listen to the full episode

Prologue

[Music: Theme]

Forget everything you’ve heard about 'bad food' to avoid, says doctor

Guest: Dr. Aaron Carroll

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: Well if you're not going to eat fat and you're not going to eat meat, all that is left is carbs. Now of course, missing carbs is bad for you. You have to eat something.

CATHERINE CULLEN: And if you're like a lot of us, you spent the last few days eating anything and everything including plenty of so-called bad foods, sweet, fatty, even boozy. But Dr. Aaron Carroll says there is a time and a place for that. He's all about de-stigmatizing what we think of as bad foods and he's my first guest today - an important listen before you set those New Year's resolutions. Plus, he's the bestselling author of books like The Year of Living Biblically and Drop Dead Healthy. But did you know that A.J. Jacobs is also your cousin?

A.J. JACOBS: When we were told as kids we're all family. Now, scientifically you can see how we're related through DNA and through these massive online trees.

CC: That's your cousin and mine - bestselling author A.J. Jacobs. He'll take us through the winding branches of the world's largest family tree in half an hour. I'm Catherine Cullen sitting in for Anna Maria Tremonti and this is the Boxing Day edition of The Current.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: Stop. Don't eat that food. The eggs, they're full of cholesterol.

VOICE 2: [Unintelligible] You're back.

VOICE 1: We were wrong about the eggs?

VOICE 2: How?

VOICE 1: It turns out there's two types of cholesterol. There's good cholesterol and bad cholesterol. Eggs actually have both. The stake. You can't eat the stake.

VOICE 2: Why not?

VOICE 1: It turns out that red meat increases your chance of heart attack. You have to cut out red meat... wait we were wrong about the stake. It's the toast. Man was not meant to eat bread.

CC: Many of us may recognize some truth in that sketch from the comedy website Funny or Die featuring a time travelling dietitian who goes back to provide conflicting advice. Eat this. Do not eat that carbs or fat or sugar is bad for you were inundated with messages about which foods to avoid and sometimes those messages seem to change from year to year. But our next guest has a message you might be relieved to hear during this season of decadent holiday eating. Those so-called bad foods might not be as sinful as they seem. Dr. Aaron Carroll is a professor of pediatrics at Indiana University School of Medicine and the author of the Bad Food Bible: How and Why to Eat Sinfully. He's in Indianapolis, Indiana. Hello.

DR. AARON CARROLL: How are you?

CC: Good. Well I want to talk about food. Bad food. [Laughs] Get our audience a little bit hungry, what do you mean when you say bad food?

DR. AARON CARROLL: Well I'm talking about all the foods that experts and doctors and nutritionists and other people have told you are bad - I mean are bad for you there's no other way to say it. The foods that are dangerous that you have to avoid, that if you eat it you're going to get sick or be unhealthy or gain weight. And unfortunately, almost anything good these days has been labelled a bad food.

CC: I mean some foods are bad for us. We hear that over and over again. Things with a lot of fat in them or too many preservatives. Do you believe that there truly are bad foods?

DR. AARON CARROLL: I don't think there are any foods which you absolutely must abstain from. I would agree that moderation should be everyone's keyword that you want, to have a well-balanced diet with a variety of foods. But there's nothing that you have to avoid almost 100 percent, unless of course you have a disease which absolutely requires you to do that. But that's a minimal number of people.

CC: But why is it problematic to think about foods in terms of being bad or good?

DR. AARON CARROLL: Well I mean the sort of comedy that you play is right on point. It's not that people are saying oh that esoteric food that no one really eats is something you should avoid. It's so widespread. Back in the 60s and 70s and even into the 80s everybody said we can't eat any fat at all. Then of course it turned and you can't eat any meat at all because meat contains the fat. Well if you're not going to eat fat you're not going to eat meat, all that was left was carbs. Now of course we say carbs are bad for you. You have to eat something. And this moving from one nutrient to the next and saying that's the bad one, that's the one you need to avoid, leaves us not only confused but with very few options so that people can't really figure out what a healthy diet looks like. And those extreme changes are nearly impossible to maintain over a long period of time. They lead people to not trust science in general and it removes a significant amount of joy from our daily lives. All of which brings no benefit. There's really no evidence that almost any of these big changes that we've made have made a significant dent in health or improved our lives in any way.

CC: Well let's talk about evidence for a moment though because I think a lot of us, we see studies that are reported in the news that to-ing and fro-ing that you were talking about seems to be motivated by science. But what have you found taking a closer look at some of these studies?

DR. AARON CARROLL: Well the problem is that the word evidence has become so murky where people say, "Well there's a study." Well first of all, studies are not the same. Moreover you can cherry pick. You can try to find an individual study which supports your point of view but that's problematic. You have to look at all of the evidence together and take all of the research that which agrees with you and which doesn't and when you do that for so many of these foods the evidence base behind proclamations that they are dangerous for you become very weak. And sometimes it turns out that there's a decent amount of evidence that these foods could even be good for you.

CC: Why isn't there a lot of evidence?

DR. AARON CARROLL: It's so hard to do studies of nutrition, which is why I think so many of the studies that you read about in the news or hear about on the radio are tiny studies of genetically identical mice. Because we can control what they eat. We can make sure that they do exactly what we want. It's hard to do that for people. It's hard to make them stick to diets for long periods of time. Even motivated people have trouble sticking to a diet. And so many of the outcomes we care about are so rare. I mean at the end of the day a heart attack or death is rare. So trying to do really well done, long-term randomised controlled trials in things about food to look for heart outcomes is very hard, very expensive, and very difficult to do.

CC: Now you say heart attacks are rare, but heart it is widespread. We just have to look around to know that a lot of people are doing something wrong because there are problems with people being overweight and obese. Is there anything we can we can point to based on your reading of the science about where things are going?

DR. AARON CARROLL: So I want to push back a little bit even on the premise of the question because its own that people are living longer than almost any other time in human history. One of the reasons that heart disease has become so prevalent is because we've gotten very, very good at preventing death from so many other causes. Even there, the rates of death of heart disease and those occurrences have been dropping in the last few decades. In fact so many of the gains we've seen in life expectancy and quality of life in general are because we've gotten so much better. That said you're also correct, that obesity has become more prevalent, that a lot of the illnesses and problems we see can still be linked to lifestyle including, diet and nutrition. And we could do a better job. But we've done a terrible job of getting people to do what we want with the rules we keep coming up with. And so you know pushing the low fat diet and then pushing will now maybe carbs are the problem, pushing that people should never eat meat or do all these other things. It doesn't work. And since there's really no evidence to say that those are really radical shifts make any difference, getting people to eat slightly better diets that are more sustainable long-term, might lead to better outcomes anyway.

CC: You mentioned meat a moment ago and I think it's time to start diving in on some of these so-called sinful foods. The International Agency for Research on Cancer a part of the World Health Organization has classified red meat as a probable carcinogen. But you talk about the cancer myth when it comes to meat. So what do you mean?

DR. AARON CARROLL: Well let's own first that, that organization which is part of the WHO, has looked into more than 1000 foods or nutrients or things in general, and of all of them I think literally one or two they've determined don't cause cancer. So at the end of the day almost anything can be linked in studies to cancer. You know one of the things in those in that list is the Sun and of course that doesn't mean you should never go outside. It just means, okay, you've got to be thoughtful about you know what you're going to do and wear sunblock and do smart things. Meat has been and again we talk about meat as if it's one big thing. Even at the end of the day it's not all meat which causes cancer according to the WHO, its processed red meat. But the WHO is very good at talking about if something causes cancer and not how much cancer does it cause. So processed red meat even if you believe all of the studies, none of which are designed to prove causality, raise your relative risk of cancer I think by something of like 18 percent. But that's a relative risk.

CC: I still want to challenge you again on meat. I want to play another piece of tape for you. This is Dean Ornish. He's a doctor and professor of medicine at the University of California San Francisco. He's also an advocate for plant-based diets.

SOUNDCLIP

Dr. DEAN ORNISH: Telling people that bacon and pork and sausage and red meat are good for you is a great way to sell magazines or books or whatever. But it's not true. Studies have shown that it's not just the protein versus the carbs, but there was an analysis that was done by the people at Harvard Physicians’ Health Study, the Nurses Health Study, they showed that red meat consumption was associated with an increased risk of all-cause mortality, cardiovascular mortality and all cancer mortality.

CC: What do you think of what Dean Ornish is saying there?

DR. AARON CARROLL: So it's going to take me a minute to unpack that. First of all I'd argue that he's probably sold many more books than I have. So I don't think necessarily saying red meat is good for you sell a lot of books and that's the reason that you do it. But he's also setting a number of studies there and he conflated them altogether. One was the Women's Health Study or the professional study. Those are studies, cohort studies, of a group of physicians and nurses that's not terribly applicable to the entire United States population. But he also cites a meta-analysis which is a collection of studies and he says that overall it proves that that people that eat meat tend to have higher all-cause mortality and higher rates of death. That same study if you delve into it and I discuss this actual study in my book says that if you're under 65 then it is true that eating meat was associated with a higher risk of death. But that's an association. But that same study said that if you were over 65 than actually eating meat was associated with a lower risk of death. Well if you believe the methodology of the study you can't quote the first half and not the second half. And when you put all of the data together, as I said before, for most meat it's still not quite clear. The one thing that looks like it might be a statistically significant result is the processed red meat which is a very specific type of meat and you could still eat a diet with no processed red meat that still had lots of meat and it is not a plant-based diet.

CC: I think we should make the point to that the conversation you and I are having is about the nutrition of food because I think some people are going to hear this you're not engaging with bastions around how ethical it is to eat animals or the environmental concerns. This is just about the nutrition of it.

DR. AARON CARROLL: From a health perspective and I totally agree if people for moral or ethical reasons or environmental reasons don't want to eat meat. I think that that's fantastic. We can quibble about the way the corporations use GMOs and whether that's a good idea or not. But that's very different than the health consequences. And we can talk about the environmental impact of organic food, but that's very different from arguing that it's more nutritious or safer.

CC: Okay. I want to move on to a very contentious food eggs. We heard that skit in the intro. There good for us, there bad for us. What can you tell us?

DR. AARON CARROLL: So for a long time certainly when I was a child we were told to avoid eggs like the plague because of course eggs have a lot of cholesterol and we all know that high levels of cholesterol in your blood are bad for you. Therefore it only made common sense that you shouldn't eat foods with cholesterol or you'd have high levels of cholesterol. But this is like so much nutrition science, what makes sense doesn't actually turn out to be true. There's very little relationship, it turns out, between what you eat in terms of cholesterol and how much cholesterol is in your blood. Most of the cholesterol in your blood is made by your liver it has nothing to do with what you eat and because of that. All of these recommendations don't eat shrimp don't eat eggs don't eat foods with cholesterol in them made no impact on people's serum cholesterol almost at all.

CC: Now it's not just eating cooked eggs. You actually address the issue of raw eggs of interest to so many cookie dough lovers like myself across the country, across the planet. What does the evidence say about eating raw eggs?

DR. AARON CARROLL: Well this again is like our inability to understand nuance and what absolute risk is. Is there a chance that if you don't cook your egg you have a slightly higher risk of catching salmonella? The answer is yes. Are you going to get salmonella? For everyone listening to this, the answer will be no. The chance of coming in contact with an egg with salmonella is incredibly low. Even if you did the chance that you're going to get sick is incredibly low. Even if you got sick the chance that you would even realize it is low. Even if you realize you went to the doctor the chance that you need to be treated is low. And even if you did the chance that you'd fully recover is very, very high. So there are benefits and risks for everything. And if the benefits of once in a while eating raw cookie dough or doing that with your children or your family that likely vastly outweighs the absolute risk you have of ever coming into contact with an infected egg.

CC: Ok so I'm having my occasional piece of cookie dough wrapped in bacon and I want a cocktail to accompany it [laughs]. New Year's Eve is just around the corner. You also tackle the subject of alcohol in your book. Talk to me about what the science tells us about alcohol consumption.

DR. AARON CARROLL: No one should be under the illusion that heavy drinking is okay. It's terrible. Alcohol use and misuse is absolutely horrible kills tens of thousands of people in the United States alone, I'm sure in Canada the numbers are terrible as well. Huge morbidity and mortality. And in no way am I advocating that. However the evidence against light or moderate drinking is quite low. Moderate drinking is for men - something like 14 drinks a week or basically on average two drinks a day. For women it's about one drink a day, seven in a week. The associations for most diseases between light or moderate drinking are negligible if not positive. For some cancers - number of cancer - there might be some small risk, but if you believe those studies for other cancers there's some small benefit. And if you believe the methodology of those studies the same types of studies also show benefits with respect to heart disease, diabetes and death. And the benefits for heart disease, diabetes and death are so much greater than the dangers from cancer that people who drink lightly or moderately tend to have lower rates of death or major disease in general than do people who don't drink at all.

CC: Now Dr. Aaron Carroll people may be getting the impression that you are just saying its okay to eat just about everything as long as you do it in moderation. But actually in your book there is one food you are not interested in defending and that is sugar. Why is that?

DR. AARON CARROLL: Yes. And even then, it's specific to added sugars. Look the natural sugars strictures that occur naturally in things like fruit are fine. No one's arguing that. But added sugars are hard to defend. They're sort of like trans fats. The evidence against it is pretty conclusive that added sugars are related pretty significantly to being overweight to higher rates of heart disease and even death. And it's very hard to find any studies that defend it. There's no nutritional value in added sugars. They are empty calories they're not helping really in any way. Again this is another one of the reasons why I would say if I had to choose between a soda full of sugar and a soda with an artificial sweetener I'd choose the diet soda every time. There's no really that diet soda is causing me any harm and significant evidence that the added sugars in those regular sodas are not really good for me. So that is one of the few things I'd say, avoid it as much as possible.

CC: You've gotten an incredible amount of grief as I understand it in the past though for saying nice things, let's say about diet soda. Tell me about what the reaction has been when you've defended some of the science around artificial sweeteners.

DR. AARON CARROLL: The first time I really wrote about it was a column I wrote in the New York Times, where I went through all the evidence against artificial sweeteners and tried to argue that really again the evidence base is not nearly as severe as people would think it is. And that produced such a backlash. I've never seen anger like that in almost anything else I've ever written and I've written about plenty of controversial topics. Commenters were questioning why my medical license had been taken away, why my children hadn't been removed from me because I let them drink diet soda every once in a while. Groups actually got copies of all my e-mails because I work for a public institution because they were convinced I'd been paid off by food companies to argue that the artificial sweeteners were okay. What is it about artificial sweeteners?

DR. AARON CARROLL: I don't know. Maybe it's because it is chemical although again everything's a chemical so that's an odd thing. But I think this is one where we have just been convinced that soda is so bad for us that artificial sweeteners have to be bad. Look a lot of the research that was initially done back in the 60s and even into the 70s, where they "proved" that some of the artificial sweeteners caused cancer in rats and now that research is really questionable.

CC: I do want to ask you about that because here in Canada saccharin was banned until 2014 because studies raised concern that it could be carcinogenic in rats. Now even if it's not certain that the same mechanism that causes cancer in rats can apply to humans some people are going to say why would I take the risk with this stuff.

DR. AARON CARROLL: So I would answer in two ways. First of all you have to go back and look at some of those studies with the rats. I mean they took bunches of rats and gave them huge amounts of artificial sweeteners and none of them got cancer. Then they started doing what we called two generation studies, where they gave rats and then the babies from those rats all of them huge amounts of artificial sweetener, and finally some of the rats got bladder cancer. It turns out that rats get bladder cancer. Humans don't really get bladder cancer and that when you give rats, some of those rats even high doses of vitamin C, they get bladder cancer. And no one's turning around and saying don't take Vitamin C because these things don't translate into human beings, which is why so many of those bands were reversed. You can't translate animal research directly into human beings which we too often do. Look the number one killer of children here in the United States, I'm sure it's similar in Canada; the number one killer of children by far is accidents. And most often it's automobile accidents. Cars kill more kids than anything else in the United States. No one ever says well if there's any risk of getting a child in a car and killing them why don't we just ban cars. Why? Because we can understand nuance that the quality of life gained from driving is so great that it's worth many children dying every year. I don't say that flippantly and the idea of like, I'm happy about kids being killed. I'm a pediatrician. But we understand nuance that some risk is acceptable for things that clearly we like or need.

CC: Cars feel like a necessity though, right? In a way that diet soda certainly doesn't.

DR. AARON CARROLL: Maybe. We can all get around on buses. We can find other ways of doing it. And you're right. But the risk from diet soda is almost negligible. Nobody's dying from diet soda, but kids are dying every day from cars. We do this every day. We do things which in very tiny ways might increase our risk and we get the nuance. But with food somehow we think that we need to bring that risk down to zero or something is not right.

CC: Now you have some rules in your book to help people. Obviously we're getting the message that moderation is part of it. But you offer some more specific tips. Can you give me a few examples the ones you think are most significant?

DR. AARON CARROLL: So I think in general if you're going to try to limit certain foods and increase and other foods there are some rules you can follow. One is that you want to stick to unprocessed foods as much as possible and I don't just mean the heavily processed stuff that you know you buy in a store that has 10,000 ingredients and chemicals in it. When I say processing, I mean food that had something done to it already. So stick to unprocessed foods and ingredients as much as possible. Then you know you're going to have some lightly processed foods and that's fine. Just try to have less of that than you do unprocessed foods. And you're going to have some heavily processed foods as well and that's fine, but try to do that even less than the amount that you would do likely for lightly processed food. So that's one general rule. Another is you got to be conscious of what you're drinking as well. All drinks with calories in them, all beverages that have any kind of calories you should treat the same way you do alcohol. Have it because you want it, but not because you need it. This includes every beverage including juice, including milk. Water is still best, I agree with that. But I think you know some of the rules that I try to push that general to try to remember that this is still supposed to be something you can enjoy. Food is the way we celebrate. It's a way that we get together. It's something we do with family and with friends so you know try to eat as much as you can with other people. Try to remember that this can be a joyful part of your life and not always be so hung up on the idea that food and nutrition in general are things that you need to constantly fear and obsess about.

CC: Moderation maybe even being a bit joyful about food sounds pretty appealing and pretty reasonable. So what do you think it's going to take though for people to actually get there [unintelligible]?

DR. AARON CARROLL: Well except for the fact that you're inundated every day with the idea that every day there's a story in the news telling us that something is going to kill us. And I spend more time talking to friends, family, colleagues, patients, people I meet, where they say but what about this food isn't that bad for you? Too much of anything is bad for you. Try to do as much of your own cooking as you can because that's how you can be surest of what's going into you. Try to be mindful of what you're eating in the sense, yes we are what we eat, but nothing is the silver bullet. Nothing is the danger that if you just got rid of that you'll be immortal and live forever and have no problems. There are lots of things that go into health and life. And how long you live and whether or not you get sick and food is not magic and we shouldn't be treating it like either the thing that's going to save our lives in general or the thing that's going to kill us. It is a part of our life. We should give it the proper amount of respect and fear that it needs. But that isn't that great and we should be careful not to overdo it.

CC: Lots to think about there. Thank you very much Dr. Aaron Carroll.

DR. AARON CARROLL: Thank you.

CC: Dr. Aaron Carroll is a professor of pediatrics at Indiana University School of Medicine and the author of the Bad Food Bible. We reached him in Indianapolis Indiana.

[Music: Sister Sledge & Jade]

CC: Coming up, we are family. That's the message behind bestselling author A.J. Jacobs latest project. His interview with Anna Maria in our next half hour. I'm Catherine Cullens and you're listening to The Current.

ENCORE | 'We are all family': Author A.J. Jacobs on how everyone in the world's related to each other

Guest: A.J. Jacobs

CATHERINE CULLEN: I'm Catherine Cullen sitting in for Anna Maria Tremonti. You're listening to The Current.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: Hi I am Daniel Radcliffe and I am a cousin of A.J. Jacobs. We're probably cousins as well.

VOICE 2: My name is George Bush and I am a cousin A.J. Jacobs. It gives me great pleasure.

VOICE 3: Hi I am Seth Rogen and I am your cousin.

VOICE 4: I am Weird Al Yankovic, and I am Barack Obama's 14th cousin twice removed. I'm also related to Lady Gaga. She's my sixth great aunt's second great uncle's wife's uncle's wife's second cousin seven times removed. I'm not boasting because you're related to them too.

CC: That's right. You are Lady Gaga's cousin. Not to mention Barack Obama's, and Daniel Radcliffe's. And for that matter, you're my cousin too. According to our next guest, we're all part of one great big family, the human family. And if that sounds a bit Kumbaya don't fret. There is some science to back this up. Bestselling author A.J. Jacobs is known for books such as The Know It All, and The Year of Living Biblically. He's described as a human guinea pig for the way he conducts lifestyle experiments such as following the rules of the Bible literally, or as literally as you can in modern Manhattan for a year. Now he's on a brand new quest to construct the largest family tree in history. It's a tree he hopes will eventually include everyone on the planet. His new book is called It's All Relative: Adventures Up and Down the World's Family Tree. And A.J. Jacobs joined Anna Maria here in Toronto last month. This is their conversation.

ANNA MARIA TREMONTI: Hello.

A.J. JACOBS: Pleasure to be here my cousin.

AMT: Well we are cousins, so you didn't invite me to the wedding. What was that about?

A.J. JACOBS: [Laughs] I am sorry. Well we'll have an anniversary coming up.

AMT: Okay, because I was hurt. [Laughs] What got you started on this quest?

A.J. JACOBS: Well this started a few years ago I got a very strange e-mail and it said: "You don't know me, but I'm your eighth cousin." And I figured - I was skeptical as you might be. I thought he was going to ask me to wire $10,000 to a Nigerian bank. But it turns out he was legitimate and he's part of this group of people who are building the biggest family tree ever, with literally millions of people, in dozens of countries, hundreds of ethnicities all on one tree. That just blew me away. I just love this idea. And I became interested in genealogy which I always thought was kind of stodgy. But it turns out nowadays. It's revolutionary. It's - I would say thrilling. It touches on everything from race relations, to politics, to history, to gender, identity, just the whole thing. So I said this has to be my next book.

AMT: So how are we all related?

A.J. JACOBS: Well we are all related because we all come from - there was an actual Adam and Eve. I don't believe in the literal biblical account, but scientists talk about why chromosomal Adam and mitochondrial Eve - and these were two people who lived in Africa, a couple hundred thousand years ago. So scientists estimate - there are different estimates, but one is that the farthest cousin you have on Earth is a seventieth cousin. So when we were told as kids we're all family, now scientifically, you can see how we're related through DNA and through these massive online trees.

AMT: So how do you go about building a global family tree?

A.J. JACOBS: Well partly it's DNA. Millions of people have taken the DNA tests. And partly it's these almost like Wiki models where you have thousands of people working on the same tree. It's like they're all solving the same jigsaw puzzle but in all over the world. And it creates these crazy trees that have millions of people, and if you go on them then you will spend - at least I did - I spend days just looking to see how I'm related to everyone on Earth. And it's like Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, but you're Kevin Bacon. So for instance Barack Obama is my fifth great aunt's husband's brother's wife's seventh great nephew. So practically my brother.

AMT: So that's collaborative genealogy that you're talking about there?

A.J. JACOBS: That's right. It is collaborative. And I say it's sort of like the Wikipedia model, with all the benefits and drawbacks of that model. I mean there are people who say that it's not accurate enough, but there are others who say actually we have people they call them Forest strangers - who are checking to make sure the connections are right.

AMT: So the actual DNA testing what role does it play in figuring out relatives going that far back?

A.J. JACOBS: Well when you do a DNA test they send you up to three things. One is they send you a list of hundreds of cousins that you didn't know you had. People who share enough DNA that they calculate with their algorithm, fourth fifth cousin, maybe seventh, maybe second or first. Then they send you an estimate of your ethnicity of where your geographical ancestors came from. So you know 40 percent Northern European 20 percent African. And then there's some to health as well. So they are able to - using the list of cousins, you can integrate that with the online family trees.

AMT: And when you tested your DNA what did you find.

A.J. JACOBS: Well it depends on which company you're talking about. I took all of them and they were not all the same. One of them I liked because it said I was 97 percent Jewish, which I knew. I knew I was predominantly Jewish. But it also said I had two and a half percent Arab. So I liked the fact that I had the Middle East conflict in my body. I embody that literally.

AMT: Which explains a lot on a bad day right?

A.J. JACOBS: [Laughs] Exactly. That is what my friends said, that explains the self-loathing.

AMT: [Laughs]

A.J. JACOBS: Which I don't know I have. I used to have more self-loathing now.

AMT: Or maybe that's hope for the Middle East.

A.J. JACOBS: There you go. I am a walking hope.

AMT: So what were you hoping for as you headed into this project?

A.J. JACOBS: Well a few things but one of them is just the really simple, but to me profound idea, that we are all family. You know we've heard it it's almost a cliché Kumbaya since we were kids, but now scientifically we can see that it's true. And my hope is that it will be a nudge in the right direction to help us treat each other less horribly. I've been shocked. I thought we were kind of going in the right direction as a species, until the last few years we seem to have gone so tribal and so divisive and everyone is split into these - and obsessed with their separateness. So I like the idea of reminding us we do share 99.9 percent of our DNA and we really are. This us versus them mentality is very crippling. I mean it might have been helpful when we were wandering around as in Paleolithic times. It is not helpful now. We've got to get together and solve these huge problems like climate change.

AMT: Talking about the scientific support for this, there was a study from Harvard on Israelis and Palestinians.

A.J. JACOBS: I loved that study and it is just one study so it needs to be replicated. They told Israelis and Palestinians, they told one group, how closely they were related and then they told the other control group, they didn't say that. The group that was told about their relationships were much kinder to each other. They were more open to negotiation. And I think that's profound if that's true. I have actually seen it on a much on a personal level and this is an admittedly trivial example. But let me give it to you anyway because I think it's instructive. You know Judge Judy; she is the American TV host. I always hated her. Like I just found her abrasive and obnoxious, then I found out she's my eighth cousin and it totally changed my perspective, rationally or not. I was like you know what, Judge Judy she's my cousin, she's not so bad. I gave her the benefit of the doubt. And actually psychologists call this the family bias or the family heuristic, which I think we were born with and it makes sense. You want to preserve your DNA. But if we can apply the family bias to everyone, I think the world would be better.

AMT: Genealogy has seen an explosion in popularity. It's a billion dollar industry. The second most visited category on the website is genealogy after pornography. Why do you think that is?

A.J. JACOBS: I think a few reasons. One is the technology explosion has made it so much easier. You don't have to go to a county clerk's office in Cleveland. Everything is on - not everything but most is online and these DNA tests are pretty cheap. I think there is a hunger to know where you came from and people do put a lot of stock in where their ancestors came from. It gives them a sense of identity. And I think that it also appeals to our vanity. I mean we are a vain species. And one of the genealogists said the museum of me and you're basically one way of looking at the world through genealogy, is like look at all of these dozens of people who got together to create me.

AMT: Well you talk about narcissism in this quest

A.J. JACOBS: There's a little bit of narcissism. I mean on the other hand you can flip it and see all of the millions of cousins you have, and that you are just one drop in the ocean. So there's a flip side and that is what I hope. You know I struggle because I'm human, so I struggle between the narcissism and humility

AMT: Well what did you discover about your ancestors that you did not know?

A.J. JACOBS: Oh. I mean I loved it. There was so much, so many interesting - and part of the book is a memoir part a sort of a science explainer. Well one thing that I loved is my grandfather. I knew a little bit about him. But thankfully the FBI kept better records than I and then my family. He had a 400 page FBI file, not because he was a gangster but because he was very involved in the civil rights struggle. He was the lawyer for Martin Luther King and I was shocked by how good a reporter - J Edgar Hoover and his men - where they had the details about where his kids lived, what he did on a daily basis. They had stories about his college shenanigans, about how he climbed up a dorm room wall and broke in to visit a coed who turned out to be my grandma. So I am thankful that he was a little bit of a rebel. I wouldn't be here.

AMT: It's interesting. So they could have been keeping genealogy records instead they were investigating.

A.J. JACOBS: There you go.

AMT: They were too suspicious. Interesting. You have a picture of your grandmother with Martin Luther King Jr. right?

A.J. JACOBS: Right. Yes. I mean it was very moving to see that. And that is one of the things that I think that it's an inspiration. That is one of the better uses of genealogy I think is to inspire your family and your kids. And it's not just the good things that your family did. There is a great study a couple of years ago, that talked about the importance that they found that kids who studied, who knew their family ancestry, were better adjusted than those who don't. But it wasn't memorizing the dates of your grandfather's birth. It was hearing the stories, and it wasn't just hearing the good stories. It was hearing the bad, what they called the oscillating narrative the ups and the downs, to show that every family struggles. They have successes and failures. But you got to have grit. You've got to stick to it and keep fighting and stick together. So it's sort of a lesson in resilience. I love to tell my kids about our family's failures. I may [unintelligible] a little too much on the side. They may think "oh my god, our family, what's wrong with them?" But I do. I think it's important to tell them about not just my grandfather Martin Luther King, but his father and how he ran for Congress on the Bull Moose ticket and got it like a humiliating 1.5 percent of the vote. And that's okay. You've got to try.

AMT: We heard a former U.S. President George Bush talking about being your cousin. How is he related to you?

A.J. JACOBS: I only memorized Obama but he's something like my fourth cousin three times removed nephew's, somewhere along there. But what was interesting, for the book, I wanted to interview some of these notable family members and he's a patriarch of an interesting family. So what I found was this family tree is like the ultimate social network. It's like LinkedIn times 10 because I called up his press person and said I would love to interview President Bush. And she said well he's not doing any press anymore. And I said "okay. I understand. But I am his fourth cousin three times removed nephew's aunt's son," and she said "Oh well in that case let me see what I can do." And next thing I know I'm on a plane to Houston to interview him. I couldn't believe it worked. But it did. So it is funny to see people do connect

AMT: Some of the connections you on unearth are very distant. You may be cousins with someone but like 17th cousins. That stretches the limits of the idea of family and I'm wondering how you define family.

A.J. JACOBS: Well what I love is, one of the themes of the book is to as you say 'stretch the idea of family' broaden it because now we have the last 50 years have seen a revolution in what the meaning of family is like. Like nothing we've ever seen. So now you've got all sorts of forms of family. You've got open adoption, sperm donors, and gay parents. There's technology where you can have three people's DNA in one embryo. So I think the future family trees are just going to be more and more complicated. And I actually welcome it. I think as long as there's enough love and discipline; it's great to have different forms of family. Like my eighth cousin three times removed, Hillary Clinton says "it takes a village." And I also like the idea of moving family away from strict DNA, because people think of family even if they're not closely DNA related. Like there's office families, there's a writer named Armistead Maupin, he distinguishes between the biological family and the logical family. And I love that idea.

AMT: That's a really nice idea, actually. How is your view of the world changed through this process?

A.J. JACOBS: Well it has. I mean I've gotten older I have tried more and more to adopt this idea of, you know; try to get away from tribalism. And this I think helped. I think it's a useful heuristic and also it changed because when I was growing up, I think you know I was a rebel a teenage rebel like most of us, and I was like what's the point of family you know. It seemed so illogical. But now since I'm a dad, that's all I think about, is family. So I like this idea of expanding family beyond. I think its Peter Singer talks about the circles of moral concern. So you start with your family and then you try to expand it and think of your block and then you're in your town, your country, the world, all essential beings. So yes, that I think is a nice message.

AMT: There's also the tension in the quest as people discover. We talked about narcissism. Talk to me a little bit more about science eugenics.

A.J. JACOBS: Oh yes. Well I think genealogy and DNA, it's like any technology. It can be used for good or it can be used for bad. And there is a history of genealogy being used for terrible things. The most obvious is Nazi Germany where genealogists were elevated because they were in charge of figuring out who was "a pure Arian." So it can be used for terrible things. My hope is that now it will be just the opposite. It will be a democratizing force and it's been very interesting to see as there have been a few articles on white supremacists, who take these DNA tests and some of them show that we are much more mixed than we anticipated. So some of them find that they have African-American ancestry or Jewish ancestry. The reactions have been varied. Some white supremacists have been in denial and they say "oh no this 23 me is a conspiracy a multicultural conspiracy. We really don't have." Others have had almost a Hollywood style change of heart and said "you know what, I am an idiot" I guess I need to change my ways?" So my hope is that the latter will happen more often than the former

AMT: And some of them say "well that proves I can't be racist" and then they continue on with their politics.

A.J. JACOBS: Well I hope not. But, yes. It'll be interesting because there is a chance that these DNA tests will do just the opposite of what I'm hoping, is that they will increase tribalism because people will say "oh I'm 65 percent Swedish. I only want to associate or marry with people who are also over 50 percent Swedish" or whatever. I am hopeful that, especially with an intermarriage, which has just risen dramatically, people will see how much we all are and be a little more open and a little less concerned with differences. And one thing I find fascinating is we're not just a mix of ethnicities. We're a mix of species because most of us have about three percent Neanderthal DNA, which is a different species. It's like you know foxes and dogs or tigers and lions. So I love the fact that we are we are like you know we are full on mutts.

AMT: The beast in you comes out in this thing. At one point you've got pictures and someone asks what is that like is that just an ugly relative. It's a cell or something.

A.J. JACOBS: Right. That is mine, and yours. 1.2 billion Great grandpa or grandma. I don't know if it had a gender but this is the nickname is Luka and its last universal common ancestor, and it is a single cell organism that lived by a volcano jet under water, billions of years ago. And it has the first DNA that is in every single living being on Earth. And life evolved all from this one cell. It's quite remarkable. So not just you and me but you know raccoons and hedgehogs and almond trees, everything is from this one, which I find quite lovely. And then I showed my kids that, my wife made the joke that, "look its round like you, got your genes," because I got a little bit of a stomach nowadays so.

AMT: You have fun don't you?

A.J. JACOBS: [Laughs] I do like my job. Yes. And I also I'm very thankful for my wife because she sort of provides a good foil for the book.

AMT: She has a sense of humor, your wife [laughs].

A.J. JACOBS: She is very funny yes. The publisher has asked her several times to write a book. But she's just "like no I have a life shelf so maybe someday."

AMT: And she's also your cousin.

A.J. JACOBS: Oh yes. This was interesting because I took the DNA test 23 and Me was one of them, and it sends you a list of all the people that you share enough DNA with to be considered cousins. And I look and I don't recognize most of the names but there is Julie Jacobs, my wife. I actually thought it was interesting. I brought it in to show her. Coincidentally she was watching Game of Thrones which is very appropriate with the theme. I thought you know maybe this will spice up our marriages like a little forbidden fruit. She was freaked out. She did not like it at all. But I have a whole chapter in the book about the history of cousin marriage and that maybe it shouldn't be as much of a taboo as we think. I mean I'm not like marching in the streets for cousin marriage, but I also think rationally we might overreact.

AMT: So how is the global family tree shaping up right now?

A.J. JACOBS: Well right now there are sort of three different main companies that are racing to unite the world. So there's one called Gene, one is called Wikitree and then there's Family Search. They all have millions of people on them. I think Family Search officially is the biggest now with over 200 million, but I imagine one day they'll probably merge. And it's hard to predict, but I would say in about 10 or 15 years we might have all seven billion people on Earth on that single family tree.

AMT: One big tree

A.J. JACOBS: One big tree.

AMT: A.J. Jacobs thanks for coming in. Thanks for your work.

A.J. JACOBS: My pleasure. It was a delight.

CC: That was Anna Maria Tremonti in conversation with A.J. Jacobs author of the book It's All Relative: Adventures Up and Down the World's Family Tree.

[Music: The Meters]

CC: That's our program for today. Stay tuned to Radio One for Q Tom Power is joined by the bestselling Da Vinci Code author Dan Brown to discuss his latest novel origin. Remember you can always take the current with you to go on the CBC Radio app. It lets you browse through past episodes of our show and start listening in just a few seconds. You can search for stories you missed or want to hear again or listen live to your local CBC station right from your smartphone or tablet. Here are the day's top stories, even make your own playlist of your favorite stuff to listen to later; it's free from the App Store or Google Play. Finally today a preview of an interview coming up tomorrow on The Current. For eight years Pete Souza was the chief White House photographer for President Barack Obama. Hear him reflect on his career as a presidential photographer culminating with the Obama years. Here's a bit of our conversation. And Catherine Cullen thanks for listening to The Current.

PETE SOUZA: For a time when I was much younger I was a official White House photographer for President Reagan. And I've worked for both the Republican and a Democrat. Do I have personal political views? Absolutely. I think we all should. We're all citizens. Did I let it affect my work? Hopefully not. My role is to document the presidency for history. I believe I did that with President Obama and I believe I did that with President Reagan. I respected both men and I think as long as you are able to respect the person you're working for then I don't think political views matter as much and yet it is.

CC: I mean it is different from journalism right. I'm somebody who works on Parliament Hill here in Canada. There can be tension at times about the access that people who are paid by the leader get to the leader versus the rest of the press gallery, I'll say. Do you see yourself as objective in that role of documenting history?

PETE SOUZA: My training is as a photojournalist. As soon as I walk in and put on the hat of a government photographer I don't suddenly take pictures a different way. By strict definition if you're the official White House photographer you're not a photojournalist, you're a documentarian. But I don't like taking pictures any differently. I wouldn't of if I had been given that kind of access for you know Time magazine or whatever. I'd still be taking pictures the same way. I think people know when they see my pictures that I worked for the president. But you know I tried to portray honestly and accurately what was taking place and that's about all I can do and people are going to have to judge me. Others are going to have to judge me on whether I did a good job or not.

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December 26, 2017 Full Episode Transcript

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